Monthly Archives: December 2008

Yes, it is Christmas eve and I am blogging. What of it? But I have to share this with the world. In case you didn’t know, the best movie EVER is on the teevee for a solid 24 hours straight. Twenty-four hours of “A Christmas Story”? YES PUHLEASE! I’ll watch it inbetween meals. So turn on TBS. This movie makes me laugh so hard I cry. The scene with the leg lamp? PRICELESS!

Fa ra ra ra ra, ra ra ra ra!

Also, in case you wanted to keep tabs on the big guy in red, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, has a Santa tracker going. As of right now, he’s in between the South Pole and South America. He best be getting to the US of A tonight! Specifically, my house.

A few months ago, I ordered myself a Rolling Stone subscription on some sketchy website using my super sweet student discount. I never saw an issue of the magazine, so I figured I had been scammed. Little did I know, the magazines were somehow coming to my home address, so there was a stockpile of them waiting when I arrived in Denver at 3 a.m. last night.

Flight delays are fun, huh? I checked into the airport in DC at 12:30 p.m. and arrived in Denver well over twelve hours later thanks to the clusterfuck that was the Boston airport. Not that I’m really complaining. I had Dave Egger’s What Is the What with me, which provided many hours of distraction along with the perspective check of, “Hey, waiting in a climate-controlled airport with plenty of food and water for half a day is not even remotely bad when compared to walking through the Sudanese desert for months, starving and half-naked.”

In general, I’m just glad I was able to get home last night and didn’t get stuck for a few days. (I’m also glad that I wasn’t in the position of these poor people on a flight out of Denver last night.) Plus, my luggage never left Boston, so I’ve been able to justify not leaving my couch because, you know, I don’t even have any CLOTHES to wear in public.

Which leads me back to my real point: I love Rolling Stone. For starters, I always feel pretty damn cool reading it, a la William Miller in Almost Famous. But I really, erm, read it for the articles. I started with the oldest magazine so I could read them in chronological order (OCD, people. OCD), so I’m back in mid-November reading articles about the election and the bailout. Naomi Klein’s article on the bailout made me veddy veddy angry, and Matt Taibbi’s roundup of his favorite moments on the campaign trail made me even happier to be an elitist liberal. Take this quote, for instance:

“The collapse of the Bush administration left the Republican Party utterly bankrupt of ideological advantage. The Bush era made it impossible to sell the party as fiscally conservative ($10 trillion deficit), militarily superior ($12 billion a month fighting a handful of Arabs in sandals to a blood draw), or even as the party of ‘moral values’ (a raft of Republicans caught offering to suck off strangers in restrooms or texting little boys on the Internet).”

Politically correct, Taibbi is not. But still, GO BARRY.

So if you need me over the next few days, you can find me on my couch, in my high school pajamas, weeping into a Rolling Stone as I watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

The Beverly Center in LA gives you two choices when it comes to your mall Santa. Naughty or nice. So you can go sit on bowl full of jelly Santa’s lap, or you can sit on six-pack Santa’s lap. Meet Eli Wilhide, pictured above, this year’s Hunky Santa. RAWR! Only in California! But I think this should be a feature at every mall.

And, just because I can, here is one of my favorite Christmas songs. Sometimes it makes me produce tears.

We all have hobbies. I like to think of mine as travel (because that sounds cool), but it’s probably reading US Weekly and the Huffington Post nonstop. For Jim Bob Duggar and his wife, Michelle, I would venture to say that their hobby is having babies. The Duggars just welcomed their 18th child into their crazy world. Little Jordyn-Grace Makiya was born on December 19. Now I love babies. I coo at every one I see. I love the little clothes, the little shoes, etc. Perhaps I’ll have one or two in my lifetime. But my god, the thought of 18 babies WITH NO INTENTION OF STOPPING makes me a little queasy. Yes, Jim Bob told the press “We both would love to have more”. Sure, buddy. Michelle Duggar has been having children for over 20 years. And as if it couldn’t get any more bizarre, here are their names and ages.

Joshua, 20

Jana, 18

John-David, 18

Jill, 17

Jessa, 16

Jinger, 14

Joseph, 13

Josiah, 12

Joy-Anna, 11

Jeremiah, 9

Jedidiah, 9

Jason, 8

James, 7

Justin, 6

Jackson, 4

Johannah, 3

Jennifer, 1

Jordyn-Grace, 0

ALL J NAMES? WHY WHY WHY? (Ginger with a J? Seriously?) You could probably guess this by the freakshow nature and all the babies, but the Duggars have their own show on TLC. It’s called ‘Seventeen and Counting’. That’s original. But will they have to change the name now? This family seems a little strange. I’ll take ‘Jon & Kate Plus 8’ anyday. They are awesome.

Besides the holiday cheer and all that jazz, one of the things I adore the most about this time of year is the end of year wrap-ups. It’s true. I would watch the E! Channel’s “Top 20 Celebrity Haircuts with Bangs of 2008” if it was on. Really, I would. But this is far more interesting than celebrity hair cuts with bangs, I hope. Here is the link to the top 20 mugshots of 2008. I’ve posted one of my favorites. Doesn’t it just make you feel better about yourself? Happy Holidays!

Last night I met up with my friends for drinks and a movie. We were planning to see Four Christmases because, you know, it IS Christmastime. But we got to the theater later than we wanted to and decided to just see the movie that was starting soonest, Slumdog Millionaire. I had only vaguely heard of it, but all of the theater employees were all, “Um, it’s amazing.” And um, it WAS amazing. Here’s a trailer:

Office parties, neighborhood parties, family parties. Eggnog, champagne, whiskey (for the family parties), wine. In the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s the opportunities to be hungover grow exponentially. If I remember my pre-calculus correctly (and there’s a good chance that I don’t) the graphical representation of what we’re now experiencing ends up looking something like this:

It’s a rough six weeks. Luckily, National Geographic would like to help. They have kindly gathered information about “Hangover Helpers” from around the globe. So if the Gatorade and Smartfood just aren’t cutting it you can try Romania’s recommendation and eat some tripe soup, because nothing says “anti-nausea” like a healthy serving of cow stomach. In Poland they recommend drinking soured milk or very sour pickle juice. I can’t imagine that that does anything other than make you vomit and if that’s the case, I’d rather take care of that Blair Waldorf style. In Japan, they eat pickled plums to cure “futsuka yoi” or, “two days drunk” and in Mexico the drug of choice is a nice shrimp cocktail or seafood salad (the real kind, not the first-grader version). The salad is appropriately named “Vuelva a la vida” or “return to life.”

My favorite “cure” is probably that found in the Netherlands: a big, tall glass of cold beer. Although it’s usually hard to imagine drinking anything alcoholic when you wake up in the morning feeling like your head is on backwards, in my family we favor a little Irish Coffee to settle the stomach or, on really bad days, straight shots of Jameson, and it seems to do the trick (I wasn’t kidding when I mentioned that we’re a walking stereotype).

No matter your potion of choice, party on! There are tons of antidotes to experiment with and you have plenty of opportunities to do so! Plus, it’s Christmas and nothing says “praise be to the Lord, Jesus Christ” like too many glasses of eggnog.